The prayerbook of Catherine of Cleves is one of the most beautiful — perhaps the most beautiful — I have ever studied. Now all the major illuminations and the facing pages are available online, thanks to the Morgan Library.

World-renowned expert in liturgical inculturation, Fr. Anscar Chupungco OSB, challenged recent announcements on liturgical reform decrying their “absence of a historical and cultural approach to the liturgy, or, in a word, the inability to fuse together the two basic concepts of Vatican II’s liturgical renewal, namely sound tradition and legitimate progress.”

The Holy See has approved some significant alterations to the Roman rite for the German-speaking church in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg, and Lichtenstein. The main innovation is infant baptism in two stages – first, a blessing of the infant with the oil of catechumens; second, after a period of preparation by the parents, baptism.

Pauline Books and Media is offering a free e-book of prayers, visible online and downloadable as a .pdf for printing and distribution, as “a useful way to focus intentions and be in spirit with those who need us most.”

A charitable reading of Anglicanorum Coetibus, one that seeks to understand it not as the creation of a new ecumenical problem but as the pastoral solution it is intended to be, will allow us all — Anglicans and Roman Catholics alike — to press ahead with the “collaboration” and “shared witness” and pursuit of deepened ecumenical relations with one another to which the Archbishop and the Pope are both committed.